


The Robin's Voice

by WardenoftheNorth



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, Curse Breaking, F/M, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-14 12:33:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29046189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WardenoftheNorth/pseuds/WardenoftheNorth
Summary: When a growing magical disturbance is noticed by the analysts of Gringotts bank, they send their finest employee, Fleur Delacour, to investigate. Once there, with help from an unlikely source, she finds something that many forces would not wish to be found. AU.
Relationships: Bill Weasley/Oliver Wood, Fleur Delacour/Harry Potter
Comments: 4
Kudos: 38





	1. Of Darkling Winter

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there!
> 
> So, I took a break from writing for all of two days, and then I wanted to write again. Really feeling the urge again, and it's a lot of fun.
> 
> This is a different tonally to 'With Whom To Dance?', but it's a fun idea that I came up while writing that story, and with the inspiration of the people over at the Flowerpot Discord. If you're looking for a fun place to get recommendations for fics, or just hang out with people that like reading and writing fanfiction, I urge you to check it out.
> 
> Biggest thanks goes to Darkened Void and Michal, or HonorverseFan, for their beta-reading and editing help, as well as their great input in this chapter. They're the best, and I urge you to check their writing out too. Thank you to Char for her prompt specifically too.
> 
> Hope you enjoy, and let me know what you thought with a review. They really do help, and they're the biggest inspiration to write.
> 
> Thanks!

Life working for the goblins of Gringotts was difficult, yet uncomplicated. Of Fleur, they asked for long hours, for which she had been initially woefully unprepared for, and they asked for her to be totally agreeable to their wishes. They demanded a machine that could wield a wand, not a witch.

Yet, beyond that, they were remarkably easy to work for. They never left room for doubt in what they asked, the pay was exemplary, and, after she did leave their employ onto greener pastures, to have worked for them was a finer reference than any other she could've possibly gained as a newly graduated witch.

In working for Gringotts though, Fleur had begun to recognise one universal truth.

Never, _ever_ , get the attention of the senior manager of the bank.

His summons was never going to be good news. Sporadically, it would be to relieve you of your job, but on most occasions, it would be to inform you of the new, awful fate they'd placed upon you. In the past, Fleur had found herself in the middle of barrows filled with impenetrable defensive enchantments and in burial tombs manned by the undead.

In all other circumstances, her assignments came from ones hardly superior to herself. They were difficult, though tedious. The manager's assignments were anything _but_ tedious.

And, the moment she'd received the tell-tale letter upon her desk, she knew she'd soon be back in some godforsaken place that time had deemed it fit to forget. Time, but not her employers.

She didn't drag her feet upon the marble floors of the bank, despite how much she might've wished to. Even as the bank sent her to her doom, it would not abide by unprofessionalism. The grand door to the manager's office was already open for her when she arrived, the open doors allowing for the viewing of her arrival by her highest superior, Grimshield.

"Take a seat," Grimshield told her. His clawed hand pointed to the stone chair that sat across from him. He offered a smile to Fleur that was mostly a grimace. "Ms. Delacour, if you would."

Fleur fell into the chair at once, already tired of the entire affair. Why on Earth they required such pleasantries to be observed even _then_ , she did not know, but to her eyes, it felt more like a taunt than a welcome.

Grimshield, the highest-ranking official of Gringotts, was a figure of perpetual dignity. He wore tasteful yet modern robes that bore no creases, his hair well-groomed and parted exactly and, if one were to talk to him for even a brief length of time, they would find that he held a level of expertise over almost all subjects they were to discuss.

"You have performed remarkably well over the past fiscal term," Grimshield said. He looked down to his notes for a moment, speaking briefly to himself in a dialect of Gobbledegook that any non-native listener wouldn't have a hope of understanding. "Three successful site inspections in as many months; most adequate."

"Thank you, Sir," Fleur replied. She spoke French while in Grimshield's company. Though her English had improved in the three years she'd spent living in London, her superior still bore a wince whenever he heard her speak it.

Grimshield leaned back in his chair, his spine perfectly straight. He would never utter 'um' or 'er' as he spoke, Fleur found. He thought silently, and only after arriving at exactly what he wished to say did he speak once more.

"A site has been identified that the bank has cause to believe holds relics that allow for the growth of our company," Grimshield began. "Given its location, there is further cause to believe that whatever is found will be of outstanding value."

"Where is that location, Sir?" Fleur asked.

Grimshield's face fell into a frown. "Are you volunteering your services, Ms. Delacour?"

Fleur shook her head. "No, Sir."

He nodded. "Its location is such that the existence of any relics will be of worldwide interest and so if there were to be an effort launched into discovering said items, it would have to be performed by a small, highly skilled team," he said. "The bank believes that you, Ms. Delacour, fit this specification exactly." He reached into a drawer obscured to Fleur's vision and pulled out a letter of parchment. "Are you amenable to this?"

Fleur thought the question was a waste of breath. Even if she was not amenable to the idea, she was quite clearly amenable to having a job and one did not exist without the other. "Yes, Sir," she said.

Only then did Grimshield pass over what proved to be her contract. All of it, Fleur knew, was non-negotiable, though she did still read it thoroughly. In order to employ witches and wizards legally, some effort was required to be made so that her safety was, if not totally maintained, then at least well-compensated. Despite the horror stories that hung around the bank, the goblins would not throw their employees into the dens of dragons without cause.

Should she agree to the offer, Fleur found that she would be contracted to work for one month beginning in only a day's time, with Gringotts retaining the option of extending this period should there be adequate cause to do so. In practice, this would mean that, if there were indeed antiquities to find, she would be there until they were found.

Yet, even as she trawled through the extensive terms, there was still no mention of where exactly she would be working. That had certainly never happened before.

The moment Fleur lifted her head to meet the manager's eyes, Grimshield spoke again.

"Your thoughts, Ms. Delacour?"

In the most sensible corner of her mind, Fleur came to realise that this new development could never be a good thing for her. She had no intention of curse breaking being her career, and to accept a job such as this one would lead to that and only that. Her life had loftier aspirations than meeting a dull end in a dark pit.

And yet.

Curiosity is a funny thing, isn't it?

"I accept your terms," Fleur said. At her reply, Grimshield passed her a black quill, its shaft made from ivory. She signed the parchment at once. "Might I know where I'm going now?"

Grimshield was quick to take the parchment from her hands. He did not rush, not quite, but there was a hurry to his movements that there most often wasn't. "Recently, we have noticed an increase in magical residue in the north of England. The increase is minute, but traceable," he said. He took a significant pause. "In the past week, the bank's analysts have managed to place the cause of this alteration exactly to Hartoft, in the North Yorkshire moorland."

Fleur immediately knew why such news was kept as secret as it was. The British Ministry was enormously protective of any historical items concerning their country and, in times gone past, had gone to great lengths to take whatever was found. Furthermore, due to the prolonged habitation of the relatively small isle, a new site of interest was a very rare thing and in their business, rarity very rarely meant anything other than value.

She leaned forward in her chair. "Do you have an idea as to what I might find?"

"There is no great history of magical residence in that area of the country except in the case of Whitby Abbey, which was the home of several notable vampire covens," Grimshield told her. "The only artefacts of great repute found in North Yorkshire were those found in the battlegrounds of the Viking invasions, belonging to both sides of the conflicts. The War of the Roses featured so few wizards that their individual accoutrements are accounted for, and as such are beyond consideration."

The news of the area lacking a wizarding populous came as a relief. Without magical residences, there were likely no burial sites to have to search through. It was much easier to get muggles to look the other way, too, and in a job as discreet as the one she would soon find herself working, that factor was incalculably important.

Martial magic, and especially enchantments, were undoubtedly a cause for concern, but unless someone was there to wield the sword or the spear, Fleur highly doubted they would provide quite the same challenge as a horde of inferi. Unless the sword was somehow sentient, though even to Fleur's well-travelled and highly sceptical mind that seemed unlikely.

"Do you know of any reason why this site would suddenly appear?" Fleur asked. Usually, they were unearthed by the growth of cities and towns. The foundations of housing projects breaking the soil over the tombs of ancient Emperors. That seemed highly unlikely in this instance, though, with England being as well-covered as it was.

"The bank has not identified any one concrete cause," Grimshield replied. "However, in similar circumstances, appearances such as these occur as a result of obscuring wards and enchantments fading away over time." He paused. "It is the organisation's recommendation that you are to enter this period of work with the expectation that you are to face something that would not otherwise wish to be found."

So, in short, she was going in blind.

Fleur stood from her seat. "Who am I going to be working with?" she asked. Her body was already half-turned to the door, damning the impropriety.

Most of all, she hoped it would be Bill. He was the only person who she worked with that she would even begin to consider herself close with and in the time she'd spent working in Britain, he'd grown to be her best friend. The fact that he was a veritable virtuoso at his vocation did not hurt, either.

Grimshield too stood, walking around his great table and beyond where Fleur stood, to stand at the threshold of the room and in Fleur's full view once more. "You are to work on your own," he said. "Gringotts believes you to be a figure that we are entirely capable of trusting with this job, and given your position within the company, we know it to be unlikely that you would feel compelled to talk about your work with anyone."

That was most certainly a shock. Fleur had never had to go alone before. Most of her assignments occurred within large groups of ten or twenty as that was the safest method to work. On most occasions, Fleur had been watched over directly by the manager of the team she had been working within, too.

"A representative from the bank will visit you once every three days to mark your progress," Grimshield said. He extended his arm outward, directing Fleur to leave his office; a directive she followed immediately. "Failure to report in such a fashion will garner consequences that you would not wish to experience."

With that final word, her manager shut his door on her with a quiet click unbefitting its massive weight.

* * *

In between the long hours of her work, Fleur's life had grown to become free in her time in England, empty of any great weights of social responsibility. She lived alone in her apartment, afforded entirely as a result of her job's lucrative nature. She had a small group of friends, though Bill was the only one that she spoke with at any great frequency. Her parents sent the occasional letter and she returned the favour with equal aplomb, though no greater. She did not know her neighbours, nor the name of the cashier that she bought cigarettes from the shop down the road.

Her life was simple. The sporadic nature of her working whereabouts was easy to accommodate for as there was precious little for which to accommodate. Her only dependent was her familiar, a robin named Arielle, though even she was a quiet influence. She was small, even for a robin, and most often preferred to rest upon Fleur's shoulder rather than fly in the air.

It took her no time to pack for her time away, as to pack would first require her to have unpacked, which was not something Fleur had done in nearly a year. Clothes once labelled in her mind as 'home wear' ceased to exist.

Certainly, life travelling had become so normal to Fleur that she did not even think to make mention of her new assignment to anyone. And so, as she allowed herself an evening of relaxing in her apartment and listening to her record player, a knock upon her door came as a surprise. Bill Weasley's face peering through the soon openly swinging door did not, though.

"Miss me?" he asked, already commencing with making a mess of her small kitchen. A true tour-de-force of terrible dietary decisions.

"Not especially," Fleur said. She watched on as Bill nearly burned himself upon her toaster, a smile upon her face. "I don't recall having given you a key to get in."

"I don't recall ever needing one to get in," Bill said, his focus entirely set upon perusing her pantry. He discarded all of her wholemeal bread out of hand until at last finding the one loaf of white bread she possessed for his benefit, and only his benefit. "Finally."

"Does your Mama not have food for you to steal?" Fleur asked.

Bill stilled himself upon the tiles of her floor, before heaving a sigh. "I can't," he said wearily. "Every time I do she just asks when you're gonna make an honest man of me."

"When _are_ you?" Fleur asked sarcastically. She smiled demurely at Bill, only to watch discomfort spread across his face. "I'm sure our wedding would be lovely."

Would it have been three years ago; she might perhaps have agreed. That was why she decided to live and work in England in the first place, fresh from a narrow defeat to Cedric Diggory in the Triwizard Tournament. She had met Bill and briefly thought that they were soulmates. Only briefly, though.

Almost immediately after that first flight of fancy, Bill came to realise that his interests laid entirely elsewhere. Most notably, in his younger brother Percy's best friend, Oliver Wood. Ever the gentleman, Bill had told Fleur far before he ever acted on any of those feelings. She was momentarily heartbroken, though soon found herself glad that her formerly-boy and now-best friend had found someone that made him happy.

However, for reasons that would only truly ever be known to Bill himself, he never did tell his parents of this development. To their eyes, and only their eyes, he and Fleur were still the couple they might well once have been.

"I still do not understand why you persist in not telling Molly," Fleur said, offering him a pointed look, which he took great delight in ignoring in favour of attempting to pick out his half-warmed bread from her toaster with a knife; thankfully it was powered by magic and not electricity. How this man could walk through the most secure defences that wizarding history had ever devised and remain totally unharmed, Fleur did not know. "Charlie has, and she was ecstatic."

Finally satisfied in his most ardent of efforts to scratch her kitchen appliances beyond repair, Bill jumped up to sit on her countertop, his lukewarm meal held like a trophy. "Charlie's allowed to do that though," Bill said. "He's not the eldest; he's not the one carrying on the family name in their eyes." He took a bite from what was undoubtedly the blandest thing that Fleur's apartment had to offer. "I've got to be the traditional Pureblood son."

Fleur took a moment to truly appreciate the figure that was Bill Weasley. His ridiculous tooth earring, his ponytail, his beard that had grown around a month too long to ever be considered well-groomed. The sleeves that his jacket lacked, the tattoos his arms held. The job he worked at.

" _Mon ami_ ," Fleur said softly. "Please choose another excuse. This one grows tiresome."

Bill groaned. "Am I not allowed to have fun anymore?" he asked. He fell back onto the counter, lounging upon it like a chaise lounge. "Can I not just want to lie to my mother with your help?"

Fleur nodded. She stood up and walked over to Bill, her arm sweeping at his legs and dragging them off the surface she occasionally cooked on. "You may," she said. She pulled out her wand and muttered a Repairing Charm toward her toaster, returning it to its prior, pristine state. "But it seems to have grown long in the tooth by now, no?"

Bill sighed. "It's Oliver," he admitted.

"What about him?" Fleur asked at once. "Does he not want Molly to tell his parents?"

Bill shook his head. "No, he bet me twenty galleons that I couldn't go five years without telling her," he said. "Called me a Mummy's boy one night before we went to bed, so I _obviously_ couldn't take that lying down."

Fleur folded her arms. "So, you're lying to your own Mama, the woman that brought you into this world, for twenty galleons?"

"I didn't ask her to do that, you know," Bill defended, his palms raised outwardly, and half a slice of bread with it too. "She'll know eventually. Just not before I win that money."

"You two share a bank account," Fleur told him. "The coins will not move."

"But it's the principle, love. The _principle_ ," Bill told her. "Don't you like my family, anyway?"

"They're fine, over short periods," Fleur said. His youngest siblings were the least appealing company, though they had improved in the years since they had first been introduced, growing to be not so bad that she would refuse to help Bill in this. "Though I think they will like Oliver more."

Even then, a dazed look fell upon Bill's face. "He certainly cuts a far more appealing image."

"Ronald may disagree."

"Oli's the only reason Chudley have won a thing in the last three years," Bill said. "Ron'll know where his bread is buttered."

Fleur glanced to Bill's own bread, entirely unbuttered. "I won't be available to aid you for a month," she said. "I'm working."

Bill spun himself around, righting himself so that he could stand. "I know," he told her. Fleur's eyes widened. "I'm your liaison."

Fleur took a step backward, her spine meeting the front of her refrigerator. "Why aren't you working with me?"

"I got promoted," he said. "Less assignments, more pay, more power."

"When did this happen?" Fleur asked. "When were you going to tell me?"

"A day ago." He paused, before nodding to himself. "And now." Bill sighed. "Oli doesn't like that I'm spending so much time out of the country. I don't either, really."

"And when did you decide that?" Fleur asked, incredulous. "What happened to the Bill I first met?"

"That Bill grew up," the man himself said.

"He did not grow up enough to be able to tell his own mother the truth," Fleur muttered.

Bill rolled his eyes. "Look, things with Oli are really starting to matter to me. Not that my family and my Mum doesn't, but I feel like I'm reaching the stage where he needs to be one of the first considerations I have," he explained. His expression shifted then, to a face that he did not often wear. "The future that I can see with him outweighs pretty much everything."

"Even yourself?" Fleur asked. "You'd give up your life's work for a relationship?"

"I'm not giving it up," Bill said, a sigh in his voice. "I'm still doing the job. I'm just looking in both directions before I run into traffic, rather than neither." He looked at Fleur directly, before mirroring her stance and folding his own arms across himself. "Maybe you should start doing that too."

"Me?" Fleur asked, even before her mind had time to digest his words.

"Yes, you," Bill said. "I seem to remember you saying when you started at Gringotts that you'd be out in five years. You'd get your Charms mastery; you'd go back to France and go into research." He walked out of Fleur's kitchen and into her living room, toward her record player, and stilling the music that still played lightly into the air. "Taking on solo assignments doesn't quite seem to fit in there."

Fleur did not immediately reply. He was right, after all.

Bill returned to the kitchen, his eyes kinder. "What happened to _that_ Fleur?" he asked, his voice far softer than before.

Fleur shook her head. "Nothing," she said, her eyes blank of much of anything. "Five years is five years, is it not?" She turned her back to him, going to her coffee table and retrieving her cigarettes. She left the balcony of her apartment to light one, Bill hot on her heels. "The greater number of difficult assignments I complete, the better my references will be."

"How many lifers do you hear saying that, though?" Bill asked. He reached out to take a cigarette for himself, though that effort ended immediately after the look Fleur gave him. "'Just one more job, then I'm out', but that never happens, does it?"

"You think I am like that?"

"Maybe," Bill said. "Maybe that's where you're heading."

"Fuck off, then," Fleur said, her eyes stony. "If I am such a lost cause."

"Now you're just hearing things you want to hear," Bill told her. "I'm not saying that this job is necessarily bad, or that this assignment is a bad idea for you. I wouldn't have put your name forward for it if I thought that." Fleur's hand fell from her mouth for a moment. "I just think it's a good time to start seriously thinking about what you want out of your life."

Fleur took the last drag of her cigarette before throwing the filter into her ashtray as it sat filled with rainwater. Her free hand had already brought another to her lips by the time the ember of the dulling flame had fully dimmed.

"There's nothing wrong with being a lifer in this gig," Bill said. "It's a fun life, and there are definitely worse ways to go than the way you end up going. You'll be rich, you'll see any place you've ever wanted to, you'll never be bored, and you'll sleep with the most interesting people in the world." Bill sighed. "But I think you want more out of your life than that, don't you?"

"You don't get to say that to me," Fleur said. In her free hand, she dug her nails into her palm until she was forced to withhold a wince.

"I'm your friend; your only one at that," Bill said. "I do get to say that, even if you want to stay blind to it."

The tip of Fleur's wand caught flame at her silent command.

"Leave," she muttered around the smoke. "Before I make you."

"Why?" Bill could not resist asking. "Afraid of actually thinking about what you're doing for a change?"

"No," Fleur replied, quietly and yet forcefully. "Because I don't want you to ruin my only free evening before I go."

Bill stood stock still, his eyes upon her. Then, he threw his hands into the air with a sigh and disapparated through her wards, leaving Fleur on her balcony, alone, with a view of the growing metropolis that was London.

Under the darkness of the late-winter evening sky, cars still congested the roads below her apartment, the shouts and discontented groans audible through the air and even reaching Fleur's ears. Even in the evening, people streamed through the streets like noise along the air. Muggle London seemed to be forever growing, forever changing, and yet then Fleur could not name a single change that had occurred in the area that she lived. The city existed in perpetual motion, and yet no one ever seemed to get anywhere.

Above her head in the apartment that stood atop her ceiling, loud music drowned out the blunt notes of a raging argument. Fleur could not garner a single word of what was spoken, nor could she name either of the two people that lived in that apartment and that were no doubt having that argument. If asked, she doubted that she could pick out their faces from a crowd, even a small one.

Fleur turned to look into her apartment. To the stacks of Charms theory books that maintained their pristine form on her shelves, their pages unturned, their binding unmarred by use. Some had been gifted to her by the Charms Professor of Beauxbatons, Professor Toulalan. Those bore kind, well-wishing inscriptions, that Fleur had read once and never again.

Her suitcase stood at her door, closed shut though she knew its contents by heart, its weight diminished by the Feather-light Charms she'd cast upon it some years ago. The bag held everything she could ever hope to want and more.

Yet then, her focus shifted immediately as Arielle, her familiar, flew through the open doors and onto the balcony, resting on her shoulder once more. Fleur threw away her cigarette immediately, her other hand passing over the robin's feathers.

Arielle was not a mundane bird, her genus being magical in origin. The druids that held power in Britain before the Romans bred them with the intent of the birds offering assistance in their rituals, to pass messages between each other over the countryside, and for their songs to soothe their young to sleep.

Yet, the effectiveness of Druidic rituals had been disproved by the theoreticians of modern magic. Her familiar would sooner sleep for a week than fly across a county to pass along a missive. And, most strangely, Arielle had no voice at all. No song, no chirping.

The emporium that Fleur had acquired her familiar from had warned her of it. Their song was apparently delightful, for most the only reason to own such a bird, though Fleur had only needed a passing look at Arielle to know they were perfect for one another.

On her rare free days off from work, Fleur would return to London to spend time with her familiar, foregoing all else. A dig site was no place for one as small and delicate as a robin, of course, though Fleur could not bear to spend any longer apart than she already had.

She thought then, on exactly that. This new assignment was not a grand excavation. There were likely no tombs, nor any undead. It was the English countryside in the brightening winter. If anything, Arielle was more at home among the rolling hills and away from London's satanic mills than Fleur herself was.

Fleur looked out into the city once more. At the buildings that filled the sky. At the crowds of people, aimed everywhere and walking aimlessly.

Arielle would accompany her, then. She did need a companion on this journey, after all.

* * *

By the time Fleur returned to Gringotts to take the portkey directly to her new home, Arielle slumbering in the large pocket of her jacket, the sky's darkness had not abated, so early in the morning was it. Even with years of experience, she had never truly grown used to waking early despite how unfailingly common that aspect of her work grew to be.

At the beginning of working for Gringotts, Fleur had not slept at all on the nights before she began her assignments, the surge of adrenaline the only fuel she needed to get through the day, or indeed the only one that she had access to call upon. Yet, as she grew in experience, that resource only shrank until she was forced to drag an hour or so of sleep from her unwilful body to survive, caffeine and nicotine only stretching so far.

Diagon Alley was entirely unpopulated as she walked on its cobbled stones, the only noise in the air the clicking of the heels of her boots on the ground. Frost laid upon the window panes of the closed stores and taverns, though the winter chill was a still one, the air unmoving.

The only source of life on the street, in truth, was the bank itself at its furthest edge. Even in the darkness, a goblin still manned the entrance, sentry to nothing except his own duty, his uniform immaculate and his form unmoved. Even at Fleur's arrival, he did not move, though the bronze doors did, pushing open without a sound.

Tellers still manned their posts in the bank's main hall, the scratching of their quills an ill-conducted symphony. They were likely auditors, Fleur knew, the night-time perfect for their reviews, away from the prying eyes of any customers. Or competitors, most of all.

She did not pay a great deal of notice to them, though she knew that such a sentiment was not shared, their attention still pinpricks upon the edges of her awareness.

Soon though, they faded entirely as she found her own desk in the unseen staffing room of the bank. Its surface was entirely without sentimental affectation, their absence causing it to stick out amongst the others. Unlike her co-workers at Gringotts, in recent times her desk had grown unused, the pictures that might once have lived next to her parchments then lived in the spare room of her apartment.

The only affectation upon the desk was one that she had absolutely no sentimentality for then, Bill Weasley. Without thought, her eyes lifted to look at the grand clock that hung upon one wall of the building. Thankfully, she was due to leave quite soon.

"You again," Fleur said, meeting eyes with Bill Weasley, her voice working through a croak as it uttered its first words of the day.

"Me again," Bill agreed. He had the good grace to give her an apologetic look, though not the grace to remain silent and simply hand over the dossier he held in his hand. "You're early."

"There is no such thing," Fleur said. "Being early means that you have more time to learn more about your job and you can never learn too much about a job."

Bill would know. He'd been the one to first utter those words to her, after all, on their first day working together.

"I suppose I could consider that an apology," Bill replied. Fleur disagreed. There was nothing to apologise for. "Though now that you're here, we can talk through your alibi, should any of the locals ask."

Fleur's eyes widened slightly. Most often, the places of interest were tourist hotspots too and so their teams passed by watching eyes by travelling among them. Occasionally muggle and occasional magical, though nearly always tourists.

"So, there is nothing to see in this place?" Fleur asked.

"Well for you there is. But, for nearly everyone else in the world, no," Bill explained. "It's a quiet part of the world, Hartoft. It's inside the national park, though it's miles away from anything people would want to see and there's only five-hundred people that live there." He reached into his folder, pulling out a single, thin page of parchment. "However, the land that surrounds it is apparently of some value, so you'll be posing as a would-be landowner, should anyone ask." He lifted his eyes to look at her. "Covers the accent anyway."

"Where will I be staying?" Fleur asked. She looked down to her attire, briefly weighing its believability if it were to be worn by the person she was soon supposed to be. She quickly sighed and directed her thoughts elsewhere, though. If one were to be young and rich enough to buy land on a whim, almost anything was believable.

Bill smiled, his face holding joviality that was poorly suited to the situation. "The bank holds a residence there for you," he said, and Fleur briefly smiled too. It was something of an inside joke among them, as it seemed that there did not exist a single place in the world that the bank did not possess some part of. For a place as small as this town was though, that was surprising. "One of the few cottages that doesn't come with a hundred acres of wheat and barley, I'm told."

Fleur glanced to the clock that hung above their heads. "I can learn the rest later," she said, taking the dossier from his hands.

Bill nodded, taking a lump from his pocket that was no doubt her portkey and dropping it onto the table. "I'll see you in three days, then," he said. He tapped his wand onto the portkey, causing a glow that burst from it.

No words of luck-giving or well-wishing were spoken, as they both knew each other well enough to know that they were both unrequired and unappreciated. They shared a nod; that was enough.

Fleur reached out and took hold of the lump, disappearing into the aether through the magic of the portkey. She didn't feel any discomfort as it happened anymore, her body having grown accustomed. The only thought she held in those moments was a brief worry as to how Arielle felt as she was transported, though she quickly remembered that as Fleur's familiar, their joined magic would ease her passage.

Darkness still bloomed in the sky as the world returned to fill her vision, though the dark could not obscure the frost-glazed hills that were to be her new home away from home. Fleur landed in a similarly frosty field, though the night's chill did not grow thick enough for the ground to grow hard beneath her boots.

At once, Arielle slid out from her pocket and into the sky, revelling for a moment in the fresh air of the countryside, though before long Fleur's friend made itself a home upon her shoulder once more. The day was still too young for the calls of other birds to meet the sky, though that time would soon dawn for the first inky blue began to grow into the pitched black sky.

Despite the apparent smallness of the village of Hartoft, Fleur could not immediately gather where she was. All that seemed to spread along the landscape were the farms built along the rolling hills, the stonewall partitions their only reprieve. In the furthest distance, Fleur could just make out the beginnings of a forest at the top of the highest hills, though the trees had not aged long enough to have grown tall yet.

With little else to do, Fleur left the field upon which she'd first fallen, breaking her brief stint of trespassing, and made her way to the nearest road. Cars did not pass by in the early hours and so, for a moment, the road was hers and hers alone.

However, one could never be too careful, and so she did not draw her wand to take any preliminary recordings of magical signatures. Even if the world seemed empty, one could never know if the next corner they turned held something. Or someone.

And, even in those dark hours in this tiny, quaint village among the hills, Fleur's caution was rewarded by the appearance of another soul, wandering amongst the time where morning and night blurred together.

Fleur heard this figure's footsteps around the bend of the lane and had a brief thought to be frightened, before recalling that she was a witch, her hands spreading along her wand instinctively. Her grip loosened when she heard the whistling of a tune along this person's voice, the noise echoing through the empty air. No doubt an old farmer stretching their legs, she thought.

At once, Arielle returned to her pocket, without the need for Fleur's instruction.

As the lane straightened and proved the reality of this new figure, Fleur found herself surprised. Though the man that appeared was certainly a farmer, a flat cap upon his head and worker's clothes upon his frame, he was most certainly not old. Fleur didn't know what age to place upon him, but he couldn't have been any older than twenty-five.

He was tall, six feet to Fleur's just under, and far broader than most men she often came across even in her physical line of work, his arms and chest holding the strength of labour. Even in the darkness, Fleur noticed the dark thatch of wild black hair upon his head, pitched in every direction, likely forever uncombed. Yet, what was the oddest sight to him was the glasses he wore, thin-framed and fragile in appearance against the clear force the rest of him was.

"Now then," he said. It took Fleur a moment to truly comprehend what he'd said and not for any distraction, either, his accent thick enough to make oddities out of everyday conversation. "Can I help you?"

Fleur nodded. "I am looking for-" She paused, reaching into her folder for the package containing her residence and key. "-two Harrogate Road?"

The man nodded. "So you're the new lodger," he said, to himself most of all. "You're looking for the house next to mine, then." He nodded his head toward the way she'd just walked. "I'll show you there if you'd like."

"Come on then," Fleur said, already turning to retrace her own steps.

The stranger broke into a slight jog to catch up. "So, what brings you here?"

"Business," Fleur said, immediately.

He sighed. "One of them."

"One of what?"

"We've had a load of new people here recently," he said. Fleur's eyes widened, though in the darkness he could never have known. "Well, two. Both wanting to buy land for fracking." He sighed. "Drilling into the earth and putting all manner of shit in there."

"Right," Fleur said, for want of anything better to say.

"Can't believe the government lets people ruin our countryside like that," the man said, gesturing to the world around him. "So, you're here for that?"

Fleur shook her head. "No, I'm not."

"Promise?"

Fleur grinned for a moment. "Promise."

The man grinned too then, though his stuck with him. "Good," he said. "I'd hate to have a row with my neighbours. Makes for difficult living, I've found." He walked ahead of her, turning so that he could look at Fleur, walking backwards along the road. "So, if you aren't here to ruin my home, why are you here?"

"Business," Fleur repeated. "The land here is purportedly of some value."

"Depends on if you think cows are valuable, I reckon," he said. The lane began to bend, though even walking backwards the man easily accounted for it. "Are you in the cattle business, then?"

"I am not, no," Fleur said. "But I represent people that could be."

"The Widdups will be happy if you're looking at theirs, then," the man said. "They've been trying to sell for donkey's years."

Fleur shook her head, mostly to himself. Of course, this man would know everything there is to know of this place. A small village knew of nothing better than its own gossip.

She focused her attention solely on him, her eyes intense. She allowed a touch of her Veela allure to pass beyond her control, her hair seemingly floating along a breeze, her skin glowing under its own lightness. "Why don't you tell me why you're out here so early?"

What Fleur expected was for the man to speak every truth he knew. That was what _should_ have happened. He would speak until she was satisfied.

What _shouldn't_ have happened was for him to not lose a single step, even backwards, and laugh at her question.

"it's not early," he said, laughing. He held absolutely no reaction to her magic; none at all. "It's six."

"I'm sorry?" Fleur asked, incredulous.

"City girl then?" he asked. Her silence, it seemed, was answer enough for him. "We're getting near calving season, so I'm up early checking on some of them." He laughed, his eyes warming in memory. "Me mum always said I had healer's hands."

Fleur shook her head again, taking a moment of silence for herself, before changing tact. "And this must be done so early?" she asked, softly.

"Better early than late," he said. "Besides, the earlier you wake up, the longer you get the world to yourself."

Fleur smiled. "Not quite to yourself."

He grinned. "Near enough for me."

The stranger stopped suddenly. Fleur followed suit.

"We're here," he said. Fleur looked up to find two cottages side by side, alone on the road without another house for as far as the eye could see. He met her eyes. "I best get inside."

Fleur smiled. "Nice to meet you."

"And you," he said, with a nod, before turning toward his home, pulling out his key as he did. He turned back briefly. "I'm Harry, by the way."

"Fleur," she called out. He smiled once more, before turning back to unlock his door and let himself in.

Fleur herself did the same with a shake of her head. A month of work stretched out in front of her, though her most immediate task was to figure out whatever had just happened.


	2. Of Contrasting Eyes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi there!
> 
> Here's the next chapter. Let me know what you thought with a review. They're always greatly appreciated.
> 
> Special thanks go to Honorversefan, DarkenedVoid, and Raph, for the great help in beta-reading this chapter. They, much like myself, can be found at the flowerpot discord, along with a lot of great people, be they writers or readers, or artists. We just recently passed a thousand members too, which is something.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy!

Living in a residence of the Goblins, to Fleur, meant the same thing in every location, regardless of circumstance. England or Istanbul, owned or rented, the process was the same. The moment her bags hit the floor, she would rip away the wards that then stood. And, with the goblins, there were always wards.

Most of them were quite useful. Protective enchantments and alarms for excessive magical energy, the sort of defenses that one might place on a safe that held something valuable. Others, like the monitoring charms that were there without fail, were not quite so useful, or rather not to Fleur at least.

Predictably, it was Bill that had shown her the time-honoured practice of returning their privacy at their first safe house. He'd drawn his wand, just as Fleur did now, and pulled apart the layered, invasive wards with a master's touch, the act so utterly acute that the goblins were never to know that he'd done it in the first place.

It was one of the many unspoken aspects of the job that had first taught her the intermediary steps of curse breaking. While not on the job description or in their training sessions, it was how all of the Gringotts staff first tested themselves. If they could carve open the bank's magic, they were ready for the more remedial aspects of their true job.

At twenty-one, Fleur had grown beyond the remedial. In seconds, the magic might as well have never existed, either to the eyes of Goblins or even to her own. No alarms set upon, the air inert.

Such was the ease that Fleur enacted her will, that she found her mind fully free to ponder the immediate mystery of her new neighbour, Harry. Firstly, she thought upon the similar inertness that her own Veela allure held whilst pointed in his direction.

Immunity was not as uncommon as some of her people might wish it to be. As with all magical things, there were exceptions to every act. If there were not, the world would hold shrines to the race of Veela and not the race of man. However, on nearly all occasions, such immunities came from magical sources, and almost never from mundane ones.

And, Harry could not be a wizard, of that she knew. If the bank stated that no wizards lived there, then no wizards did. The goblins were very rarely wrong where such matters were concerned, their records the finest wizarding census the country could hope to have.

The near absoluteness of her allure was the most relevant cause of her job offer from the bank. Beyond all else, her magic offered her the ability to maneuverer the attention of muggles to her every whim. A crowd looked to her when she directed it to, and away from all others as a result. Her first assignments, therefore, were to muggle areas, where their discovery would be cataclysmic.

She realised that was likely why she was chosen for the job in Hartoft, beyond even Bill's recommendation. It was not that she would go unnoticed, as no-one could, but that she could go noticed _and_ remain able to work.

However, the fact remained that, on this occasion, the paradigm had shifted. No matter which direction Fleur pointed, Harry would not look. In her line of work, that made him dangerous, not for her safety, but for her success. Any one man could be obliviated, but his voice could carry to many and the lights of suspicion would be forever cast upon her.

Almost thoughtlessly, her wand set upon recasting the wards onto her cottage. Some were nearly identical to those that stood before, though they were hers. And, in matters of safety, that was all that mattered.

Fleur knew that she would have to be careful around Harry; that her performance would have to be flawless. She could never arouse suspicion, yet nor could she ever lead Harry, or indeed anyone, to think that anything was amiss. To all of them, she would be the wealthy foreigner and nothing more. That task was made all the harder by the open expanse of the world that she currently found herself in, the air clear and the eyes clearer.

Through the windows of the cottage, dawn broke though only very quietly, light hardly streaming at all from the sky through the thick fog of the February air. Yet, as the light did slowly grow, yet more of the landscape revealed itself. Hills upon rolling hills for miles upon miles.

Given that she now lived on a country lane, and indeed the only true road in view under the dawning light, she expected the occasional rumblings of cars to greet her ears too, though absolutely nothing did. No cars, no buses. Nothing.

Fleur gave a thought, in that instance, to the notion that this 'Harry' was a figure of her own imagination; that this sprawling world was just as he had said, entirely her own. For that moment it was. The hills stood without a sheep, her neighbours silent in their cottage, the roads without passengers.

A knock upon her door gave an immediate end to that notion. Fleur moved to the door at once, its opening did not reveal Harry again though, but perhaps a figure she might well have expected to see in such a sleepy world.

There was a woman of fifty or so, two or three heads shorter than Fleur. She was dressed for the cold weather, and in her hands, she held the leash of a black Alsatian, its size great enough that it was likely the same height as its owner when stood upon its hind legs.

The lady had kind brown eyes that stood warmly against her greying hair. The dog's eyes held no kindness, only a striking sense of focus directed solely toward Fleur.

"Hello, love," the lady said. Though she tried to hide it, she could not resist leaning through the doorframe ever so slightly to glance at Fleur's new home. She found very little. "I'm Catherine, I live next door."

Fleur blinked, silent for a moment. "Fleur," she decided.

The lady smiled, her eyes crinkling as she did. "Harry mentioned you when he got in," she said. "He did say you were French." Both of her hands came to rest upon her hips. "You know, me and my Matthew went to France once. A few years ago mind, before Harry, but we had such a lovely time there."

Fleur fought the urge to shake her head by nodding along. "Where?"

"Champagne," Catherine said. "Went there for a few days of our honeymoon, back when Matt's dad was still around. Couldn't go these days, of course."

"Of course."

Catherine allowed herself another look into Fleur's front room. "Harry mentioned you wanted to see the Widdups about their land?" she posited. "Well, I'm just going to see Diane now. Would you like me to pass the word along?"

"I would prefer to learn more of the area before I commit to that," Fleur said.

"Well there isn't much else to know," Catherine said. "They're the only ones looking to sell off what they have." She leaned slightly, though this time to whisper to Fleur rather than observe her. "Between you and me, they keep approaching my Matthew about buying their land."

Fleur nodded, taking a step backward. "I would still prefer to wait."

Even as she spoke though, she knew that Catherine would pass along the message. Quite clearly, gossip did not remain idle long in a place such as this.

Silence grew and Fleur hoped it would be enough for Catherine to leave, but the older lady suddenly startled, as though she'd been stung.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, her hand climbing into the air. "Before I forget. There's no milk-delivery service around here, so whenever someone stays in this house we usually give them milk from the farm. Would you like that?"

Fleur nodded, her eyes peering into the outside "If you would not mind."

"Course not, love. It's what it's there for," Catherine said. She looked down at the dog at her feet. "Well, we need to be going or Paddington will get restless."

"Nice to meet you," Fleur departed with.

Paddington the dog turned away quickly, leading its owner down along the lane.

"Au revoir!" Catherine shouted over her shoulder. Fleur frowned then, her expression, at last, free to grow unguarded.

Fleur waited at her doorstep until she watched the other woman disappear from view before she lit a cigarette, a migraine near to forming with its prior absence. She closed the door behind her and set about finishing the beginnings of her protections. With her only living there a month, it did not take long.

* * *

Though she had known it before she'd even arrived, the chiefest of her problems to solve was found in the utter vagueness that was her assignment to begin with. At many times in her current vocation, Fleur had been forced to turn a corner with no idea as to what existed on the other side, though never had she been forced to question if there was even a corner to turn in the first place.

However, where circumstance was not on her side, magical theory was. And, without fail, whenever instances of magic occurred in mundane areas, a signature was left. Always. It was how the village of Hartoft appeared on the radar of Gringotts. From the place in which an artefact sat, this signature would spread into the world around it. All that Fleur had to do, therefore, was to study the strength of these magical signatures in the village. The stronger the signature, the closer she was. Beyond that, her life became straight forward.

The only issue that she faced was her own magic interfering with the readings that she took. However, given that outside of her studies, she would only use her wand inside the comfort of her home, unless the artefact in question was beneath her floorboards she doubted that problem would prove too vexing.

What _was_ vexing, however, was that after Catherine decided to introduce herself, the entirety of the village deemed it fit to, too. She could not so much as read a page of the bank's documentation on her assignment without a knock on her door from the next farmer, welcoming her to their part of the world. Mr and Mrs Bothoroyd, Boothe, and Bresnan all came and went before she had time to so much as pour herself a cup of coffee.

While bothersome, it did at the very least allow her to test her own Veela abilities, the morning having allowed clouds of doubt to collect in the skyline of her mind. Perhaps, she came to think, it was an oddity of the environment, and it was simply that this place of hills and farms and little else, grew immunity alongside its livestock.

Thankfully, however, that was not the case. Each of the other farmers left Fleur's cottage with an unassuming smile and a warm disposition. Which, while relieving certainly, did place Harry in a light that had only grown more perplexing.

And, to her total lack of surprise, one of her visitors on that day proved to be the man himself. At his knock, she opened the door to find him filling her doorway, his hands holding a pint of milk and his face still bespectacled. Yet, in the light of day, what was most striking were the very eyes that looked at her then.

They were the most arresting shade of green she'd ever laid sight on.

So arresting, in truth, that she forgot to speak.

"Alright," Harry said, his voice filling the empty air that Fleur only then realised she'd cultivated. He raised the glass bottle aloft. "Mum mentioned this, I think."

Fleur nodded and took the bottle from his hands almost absentmindedly. By instinct, her other hand reached out to take a cigarette. She rattled the pack, hearing only two or three left.

Harry's brow furrowed. "You smoke?" he asked. Fleur rolled her eyes, and walked directly toward the door, not slowing to wait for Harry to move out of the way.

"Clearly," Fleur said, her lips wrapped around the filter. She closed the door behind her so that the smoke did not permeate into her living room. The smell, for reasons she herself did not know, was one that even magic could not fully remove. "Would you happen to know where I can buy them?"

"No," Harry told her, folding his arms across his chest. He flexed his hand upon his bicep as he did, the cloud-dimmed light of the sun shining upon his knuckles, revealing the small scars that lined their way upon them. "No-one here smokes so the shop doesn't sell them anymore."

"No-one?" Fleur asked. Thankfully, she'd remembered to pack herself a lighter, which she fished out of her pocket with only a brief struggle. "I thought that was what farmers did?" She lit her cigarette. "Smoked pipes and rode tractors."

Harry's jaw clenched; the tightening of muscles visible underneath the light dusting of stubble his face held. "No-one here's that fucking stupid," he said. "Life's hard enough without ruining your lungs for no good reason."

"Any other thoughts of others you wish to parrot?" Fleur asked. She could feel her nostrils flaring. "If you think what you're saying is of interest to me, you're much mistaken."

"So, you know you're doing something wrong, but you're still doing it because it's _easier_ than doing the right thing?" Harry asked, His eyebrows bunching together.

"No, I'm smoking," Fleur said. She pointed along the road. "That's it. Leave, if it bothers you so much."

"Happily," Harry said. He rolled his shoulders. "Good to know exactly what kind of person you are, anyway."

Fleur leaned back, her spine meeting her door. "And what is that, then?"

Harry met Fleur's eyes and smiled at her. "A coward," he said. He walked around her then, walking down the pathway that led to and from her cottage, before turning so that he could still look at her as he spoke, walking backwards once more. "A short-sighted idiot. A fucking child."

He had already grown too far away for her to respond by the time that she might have wished to, her free hand forming into a fist as she mulled over his words silently. How dare he, she thought. This man who'd likely never gone more than five miles from the tiny shithole he lived in, tell _her_ what to do. The arrogance of that village idiot.

She finished the rest of the pack off on her doorstep, just to spite him.

….

As Fleur expected, by the end of the day the news of her apparent interest in the Widdup's property circulated to the family themselves. The couple knocked upon her door just as the last of the day's light bled from the sky, coinciding with her having just finished reading the last page of her dossier. She hadn't gleaned a great deal from the goblin's information, which while not surprising was still irritating.

The Widdups, to her tired eyes, appeared no different than the other farmers that had greeted her on that day. Pale and ruddy-faced, their backs hunched as they stood. Yet, Fleur noticed a watchfulness to them that struck her, their eyes shifting like a spooked deer.

"Can we come in?" Mr Widdup asked, taking off his flatcap as he spoke. He was of a height to Fleur, though he was many years her senior, by thirty or forty years if she were to guess.

Fleur smiled. "Of course," she said, and she allowed her accent to slip through more strongly as she spoke. "Would you like tea?"

They rushed into her house, taking a seat at her dining room table beside one another, so that they both were facing the door they'd just walked through. "If you would be so kind," Mr Widdup said. "Milk and two sugars for both, if you wouldn't mind."

Fleur nodded. With thanks to her kitchen being obscured to their sight, she silently charmed her kettle and spoons to make the drinks for her.

"How did you get here?" His eyes flicked to watch out of her front window. "You've no car."

"I have a chauffeur," Fleur replied quickly, her voice rising in pitch as it floated toward the other two.

"Can you not drive yourself?" Mr Widdup asked.

"I've had little need to learn," Fleur said. She allowed herself a smile.

By the time her magic had finished brewing the tea, and she returned to the couple, Mrs Widdup had begun to drum her fingers upon the table impatiently. She flashed a polite smile to Fleur, at Fleur's return, though.

"Thank you, love," Mr Widdup said.

"My pleasure," Fleur said, meeting his eyes. She allowed her allure to brush against their consciousness. "So, I take it that you two have heard of my interest?"

They both nodded eagerly.

"It's a great plot of land," Mrs Widdup said, her eyes ceasing their shifting to stick to Fleur and Fleur alone. "Great soil, great size for the cost and we've not had any sickness in our stock for three years now. We've a champion bull, too. Quality breed."

Fleur quirked the corners of her lips upward. "Sounds _incroyable_."

"It really is," Mr Widdup said, almost breathlessly. To Fleur's ears, it sounded as though he was panting. "And it's the type of land that'll only go up in value in the years, 'specially with the fracking everyone wants to do, so even if you decide you don't like country living, you can turn a profit if you do sell."

"You paint quite the picture," Fleur said. "I have to wonder, though. If it is so lovely, why are you trying to sell it?"

Even under her influence, they soon sat back in their chairs. "Well, farming is quite a hard life you see," Mrs Widdup said. "We're nearing retirement age, and I don't want to spend my old age _here_."

"And that's all?" Fleur asked her allure fully upon them then.

Mr Widdup's red face scrunched together, at war with himself, before at last, he gasped out. "It's this village."

"What about it?" Fleur asked, her elbows upon the table and leaning forward.

The Widdups looked at one another for a time. And then, Mr Widdup placed his hand over his wife's.

"Things have started happening," Mr Widdup said. He cleared his throat. "I don't know how everyone else doesn't see it." He looked at his wife. "But we have."

Fleur could feel her eyebrows raising. "What sorts of things?"

"Things that have no business happening," Mrs Widdup said. "Not all bad, mind, but you can't trust it." She looked down atFleur's floorboards, before looking up once more. "Sheep that live forever, as long as we've been alive or more. Wolf howls in the night, loud enough you'd think they were in your back garden. Folk disappearing, never to be seen again."

Mrs Widdup's eyes drifted out of focus; her mouth slightly open. Her husband's voice soon spoke, though.

"It's the forest, love," he said. "There's something up there in the forest in the hills. You can hear voices in the trees, like caught souls."

Fleur grinned at the prospect. _This_ is what her dossier should've said.

"Another cup of tea?" she asked.

The pair nodded wearily, even though their cups remained half-full and half-hot. Fleur took them anyway, turning so that she could return to the kitchen once more.

"One last thing," Fleur called out over her shoulder. She topped up their drinks, slipping a calming draught in there too. "What do you know about Harry?"

"He's a lovely lad," Mrs Widdup said, mouthing a 'thank you' to Fleur as she returned with another drink. "Always helps out whenever someone needs him." She smiled. "He brought us our groceries from Pickering when it snowed last month. 'Said our car wouldn't handle the roads. Sweet lad, really."

"Good worker too," Mr Widdup said. "Lord knows he needs to be, with how big their land is and with only three of them."

Fleur watched them take a sip of their tea, their shoulders sagging almost instantly. "He does seem that way," she agreed. They nodded along. "Anything peculiar about him?"

"I wouldn't say peculiar," Mrs Widdup began. She gave a brief, cautious look to her husband. She leaned in toward Fleur soon after, and with a softer voice, added. "He's adopted."

Fleur shook her head. "Anything else?"

"What's got your interest?" Mr Widdup asked.

"Nothing," she said quickly. "I would just wish to know the people that I might one day live beside."

That, it seemed, was good enough for the pair of them.

"He's a quiet lad," Mrs Widdup said, her voice still holding a hush, as though half of the village were suddenly going to leap from Fleur's cushions. "Didn't have many friends at school; spends all of his time working, so we hear."

"Left school when he were sixteen, too," Mr Widdup said. "Didn't even go to college. He even skipped his exams for GCSEs, after his Granddad died three years ago."

Fleur blinked rapidly, comprehension slowly dawning. "He's nineteen?"

"Eighteen," Mrs Widdup corrected. "He was born in July."

Fleur shook her head as though the action would unwrite what'd just been written into her mind. She'd thought many things about him, but none of them included him being a teenager. An immature arsehole definitely, but not one that was younger than her.

"There's more talk about him, too," Mr Widdup said. "You didn't hear this from us, but he's been known for getting in fights."

"Fights?" Fleur asked.

"Young men's games. Blowing off steam is all," Mrs Widdup said. "Though, with how big the lad is, you'd think they'd think twice about doing it."

"I suppose they only try the once," Mr Widdup added.

It was then that Fleur knew absolutely that Harry was not a wizard, as she knew of no wizard, be they English or French or otherwise, that would throw away their health in such a stupid manner.

And the nerve of the man, Fleur thought. To call _her_ a child. At least smoking was fun.

* * *

After two day's research, Fleur came to realise that the entirety of the village, by consequence of nearly all of them working in the same job, held nearly identical schedules of living. They rose at the same time, worked the same long hours, and all slept entirely too little to be healthy. Most drifted toward the few pubs in the centre of the village after their evening meal, where they would drink well into the night, though stopping long before they'd had their fill, for they knew that the next day only held the same as the one before, and the one after that, too.

There were few people of normal working age, or rather what Fleur mostly considered to be such an age for a muggle. Most veered nearer to sixty than forty, and outside of the unfortunate one that she lived beside, she had not yet seen sight nor sound of another one close to twenty.

Those that were capable enough to go to universities in the cities of England did so immediately, without a thought given to ever returning. All that was left alongside the old farmers were the small-minded, the unambitious, and the unskilled.

By the eleventh hour of the afternoon, the streets were as deserted they had been in the dead of night. Not a soul walked the streets except for her; not even a drunk in a stupor. No groups of teenagers riding bikes, no hands passing over one another in dark and secluded corners. Nothing, except for the hollow image of quaint English stillness that was Hartoft.

Even to Fleur's eyes, the image was a delightful one. Winding roads of cobbled stone and a church formed by ancient bricks, weathered and yet tireless in its construction. Cottages with thatched roofs formed a ring around the village square and rolling hills circled those too. The sight gave Fleur idle thoughts of retirement and aging gracefully, yet they were easily dismissed. Though it was lovely, it was lifeless.

Such was her confidence in her assessment of the village's emptiness that Fleur allowed her wand to be drawn, at last taking the preliminary readings of the village and the magical signatures that had begun to appear. Along the roads to and from Hartoft, she gleaned nothing. The source, therefore, was not caused by the accidental transit of magical materials, like magic carpets mistaken for a rug or a genie's lamp sold as household decoration.

The houses upon the roads were not the root, either. The dust in there did not hold spirits, nor was the collected dust swept away by the hands of house-elves. Truly, that left only three areas to search. The village square, the farmlands, and the forest.

Yet, as her night drifted toward the village square, Fleur finally satisfied that nothing was immediately out of place elsewhere, that she almost immediately threw away the notion that anything could be found there, as there was so very little to find. The public houses held nothing except the public and not even that in the night. The church, while certainly ancient, held nothing except the dreams and thanksgivings of the town. The shops, meagre few that there were, provided nothing except that which was most essential.

Fleur, however, found herself drawn to the church. It held no grandeur in design, nor any significance in religious circles. If it did, it would not be surrounded by a world as lowly as the one that it was. Yet, under the dim street lights, the house of God seemed oddly transcendent, even to the eyes of one that had seen Beauxbatons and Hogwarts. It stood raised from the rest of the village, in the very epicentre like a Lord over their fiefdom, its spire lancing through the sky and into the heavens.

Upon Fleur's approach, the cobblestone path she walked was forced to rise, until all that she could see was the façade of the church and the forest looming in the distance. The black sky of the night was absolute, and upon the rolling hills of the moors, a fog began to roll in.

And, as she finally reached the church's oaken doors, it became known to her that when she did enter, she would not be alone in there. Yet still, her wand still forced the door to open all the same.

Even bereft of its congregation, the air of the church, upon Fleur's first inspection, held a weight, a fullness, that was in direct contrast to the rest of Hartoft. Like all churches, it held an aura of power, of which even magic held few direct parallels. The will of collective belief, the dignity of acceptance, and the recognition to forces greater than any one person could ever hope to be.

Fleur had always felt unwelcome in such places. The hymnal choirs held no room for her voice, the pews, it seemed, held no place for her. Yet, it seemed, they held such a place for one more soul.

As, softly slumbering upon the wooden benches, Fleur found another wandering soul.

They were small. Much smaller than Fleur, by a head and a half at least. The church's candles flickered in the room, this person's fair complexion illuminated, though perhaps more so than that, they seemed to hold the light as if it were theirs. Freckles graced the highest point of their cheekbones lightly, and even as they slept, Fleur could see the dimples that wished to form around their red lips.

There was a contrast to their features that held Fleur's interest quite absolutely. Their face held a heart-shape, and yet their jaw, and their cheekbones held an elegant, direct grace. Their nose small, and yet pointed. Their dark brown hair seemed to tangle and yet fell exactly as they wished it to. And, no matter how much Fleur's allure would delight in taking their interest, just as they had taken Fleur's, yet no matter how often her magic attempted to grip upon them, the allure found nothing to hold.

To bring this person's interest to her, Fleur found, was like trying to grip smoke.

In her efforts, however, the only change that Fleur had managed to cause was to render this soul awake, their sleeping ceasing, their eyes opening to reveal two colours. The left eye green, like an autumn's forest. The right eye blue, and striking, and ageless.

"And who might you be?" they asked, their voice holding no signs of sleep nor tire.

"I could ask the same," Fleur replied, her hands idly passing over her wand.

"But I asked first," they said, their words taking a tuneful lilt. They swung their legs underneath themselves, going from laying to standing before Fleur could blink. "And, if I answer first, that wouldn't be fair, would it?"

"I suppose not," Fleur agreed, though even as she said it, she did not know why she did.

They smiled brightly after Fleur's words, the cheeks, at last, holding their dimples. For a moment, Fleur took in their clothes and quickly found that she did not know how to describe them. They were neither modern nor archaic, warm nor cooling. "I'm glad you agree," they said. "So, may I have your name?"

Fleur took a backward step.

"I'm known to most as Fleur," she said. "And what is yours?"

Their eyes narrowed for a moment. "I'm known by many names, and many of them are in tongues that you do not know," they said, before grinning once more. "For you, though, I'll give myself a new name." They pushed out their hand for Fleur to shake. "Ora, I shall be said to go by."

Fleur met their eyes, and in one last effort, brought her allure to swell inside the church, all of it going into the direction of one, and only one. Yet, nothing came of it, except a laugh from Ora.

"I rather liked that," Ora said. With little else to do, Fleur shook the offered hand, finding Ora's far smaller than her own. "Your magic is most fascinating."

Fleur could feel her eyes starting to grow wide.

"Thank you," she still said. "Could I know why you're here?"

"In the church?" Ora clarified. Fleur nodded, their eyes still holding each other. "Well, sleeping of course." Ora let go of her hand and jumped up onto the church pew, the additional height only placing her fractionally taller than Fleur herself. "Now, I get to know why _you_ are here."

"Searching," Fleur told her. "I've moved here recently, and I wish to learn more about the village."

Ora's brow furrowed. "There isn't much to see," they said, before smiling whimsically to Fleur. "Well, there is now that you are here, of course." Ora's gaze flicked toward the ground, pushing a lock of her hair to reveal ears that held a slight point at the top. "But not much else."

Heat spread across Fleur's cheeks; something that hadn't happened to her in years. "You are quite something to see, too," she said.

Ora suddenly jumped down off the pew.

"I really ought to be going," they said. They made their way to the door of the church, the very door that Fleur had entered through, and did so in such a way that Fleur never left their sight. "It was lovely to meet you, Miss Fleur."

"You too, Ora."

They reached for the door, though just before Ora opened it, they reached into their pocket first.

"Might I give you a gift?" Ora asked. "As something to remember this wonderful first meeting."

Fleur shook her head. "That is most generous, but I think I shall have to say no," she said. "Meeting you was gift enough."

Ora smiled. "Our paths will cross again soon, I'm sure," they said, and left without another word. Fleur found herself alone in the church, and in Hartoft, once more.

In the returning stillness, she found herself forming only one thought. That she _hated_ parlaying with the fae.

And, if they were to make their presence known in Hartoft, that meant that whatever had ensnared the goblins' interest had taken theirs too.


	3. Of Beginnings End

Arielle flew to her shoulder the moment Fleur came upon her kitchen, the sight of Bill Weasley that greeted her the sole cause.

The day was young, and with the briefest of thoughts, Fleur came to know that nothing was untoward with the protective enchantments upon the cottage, yet Bill stood there all the same.

"You're early," Fleur said, with a glance to her own attire. The night's sleep after her meeting with Ora was not a peaceful one. They very rarely were after meeting with one of the fair folk, even with a day's separation. Childhood stories of the fae whisking people away still rattled inside of her mind in the night, her body jittery and fitful like a spring that'd been held down for too tightly for too long. Her hand passed over Arielle's wings, which soothed her slightly.

"Better early than late," Bill replied. He lifted his head to stare quizzically at the ceiling. "There are worse places to work, I suppose."

Fleur pointed her wand to the kettle absently, the water instructed to boil. "How did you get in?" she asked.

Bill smiled, taking a seat and placing the leather jacket he wore on its back. He brought his legs up so that they could rest upon the chair beside him. "Your wards are set so that only you may pass through unchecked," he said. "I simply made them think I was you."

Fleur was silent then for a time, long enough for the kettle to boil, and for the coffee to be stirred and summoned toward them.

To mimic another perfectly to the eyes of magic, as Bill had no doubt done, was a feat of greatest admiration. To take note of the shape of their magic, and Fleur's own especially given her heritage, and mirror it so wonderfully that even the truest readings of the world could not differentiate one from another was skill beyond skill.

That was the sort of feat that earned a wizard a senior position in the bank of Goblins, for that deftness was quite nearly unnatural. One that made Bill Weasley more valuable than half of the gold in most of their vaults.

The fact that he had done so rather than simply knock on her door was profoundly irritating.

"There is something odd in the air of this place," Bill said, his voice seeming to age in his throat. He sounded like the master he was, rather than the child he played at being. He sat up properly, too, his legs beneath him. "A softer kind of magic than one I often see."

"A fairer kind," Fleur said. At once, her hands began to grow restless. They drummed upon the table and she brought them to her lips absentmindedly. She was forced, too, to resist the urge to bite her fingernails. "I met one of their kind last night. Ora, their name was."

Bill shook his head, his eyes still surveying the ceiling in recollection. "It is not that," he said. "Their magic is all wishes and manipulation. It is just, but it is not kind." He looked to Fleur. "How are you?"

"I am drawing close to knowing where I need to go," she said. "It's the forest on the hill. That is becoming clearer the day. The locals talk of it like no-man's-land. It is thick enough to cover all creatures that might hide there, and deep enough for the fae to make their homes."

And, after a very early morning's walk along its perimeter, her analytical magic had failed her. That did not happen by accident. Clearly, whatever lied within that forest had no desire to be found, be that by her or anyone.

"I wouldn't rush to blame the faeries quite yet," Bill said.

"You think that is not their creation?"

Bill hummed thoughtfully. "I know that the magic here is not one of spells and wands, and I know it does not feel like the Fae's work. I know nothing more than that," he said. "This place feels like northmost Greenland, where the folk magicks are the only magic taught."

"I have not been there," Fleur said.

"It was an annoying job to work," Bill said, sipping from his coffee, though finding it much too hot, the tip of his tongue pained afterwards. "I could never take any signatures, no matter how broad or narrow my search was. At first I thought it was because we were near the North Pole, but I came to realise that it was the magic itself." Bill sighed. "It was like trying to eat soup with a fork."

"So how did Gringotts find about It in the first place?" Fleur asked. Arielle began to play with her hair, and so she summoned water and birdseeds for her friend to eat.

Bill frowned. "I don't know," he admitted. "From what I can gather, their magic is one not born of intent, but of energy. Their instruments read the energy in the earth, and mine it and find gold. They read the energy in the air and find the nests of dragons to take. That is all they need."

Fleur realised at once her error, of course. Her intent.

In her searches, even brief though they were, she had aimed her magic upon searching for artefacts and energies that were invasive and obtrusive, foul-formed and ill-wanted. After all, that was the sort of thing she had most expected to find in Hartoft; that was what, in her work, she most often found.

"Are there spells for finding revealing the magic that you found in Greenland?"

"None that I know," Bill said. "Perhaps if you spent half a lifetime in the libraries of Hogwarts or Alexandria, you might find something that might approach halfway useful, but I do not know them now." Bill gave her a serious look, his blue eyes foreboding. "You haven't the time, either."

"If the fae know of what lies here, then I definitely don't."

"It is not only them," Bill told her. He gripped the edge of her dining room table. "The Ministry has taken notice."

That was to be expected, Fleur knew. She _had_ been using magic in a muggle area. Even though, according to Gringotts' information, the residence had been registered to the relevant parties in power, eventually the oddity of a non-native wizard living in the middle of nowhere in their country would rouse some suspicion.

"It's more than that, though," Bill said. "I think they know there's something here."

Fleur nodded. Likely, an auror would be on her doorstep by the evening.

"I'll call for you soon, if things go wrong," Fleur said. She flashed him a brief smile. "Perhaps you might be my boyfriend once more."

Bill shook his head, shaking away the levity she might well have hoped to bring to their conversation. "Make sure they don't learn of anything," he said. "Gringotts would not abide that."

Fleur frowned. She thought to summon her cigarettes, though realised quickly that she'd forgotten to apparate to the nearest proper town to buy more. "Gringotts ought to have placed more people on this assignment then, if their desires are so particular that they must take precedent."

"You know that the bank can't," Bill said, sharply. "This job isn't like that. You know that."

"I do?" She asked. "That is odd, that you know me better than I know myself." Her jaw shifted beneath her skin, the muscles tightening. "They can do whatever they want. It's just more _convenient_ for them not to."

"No, they can't," Bill asserted. He took a breath and finished the then-properly cooled coffee in one drink. "You're the only one that can do this job. Not me, not anyone else."

"if I am such a valuable commodity, they should learn not to order me here and there," Fleur said. She sighed. "The artefact, whatever it may be, will be found. That is all that will matter in the end."

Bill sighed. He pulled his hair from its ponytail, relieving the pull upon his scalp, and ran a hand through his hair. "You're really not making my life easy here."

"The main goal of my job isn't making your life easy," Fleur told him. Upon the table, Arielle had finished with her breakfast and returned to Fleur's shoulder. "Your acceptance of _your_ job doesn't make my life easy, either."

Bill stood, sweeping his jacket into his arms with a single motion. "I apologise for not living every moment of my life catering to your every whim."

Fleur leaned back in her chair, her arms folding across her sternum. "Apology accepted."

He rolled his eyes, taking a step toward the door.

"Do we have to leave each other on poor terms every time we talk these days?"

Fleur's gaze lifted to look him in the eyes. "Do you have to continue being a prick?" she asked.

"Seems that way," he said, with a brief shake of his head.

A knock came from her front door. Both of their eyes snapped in its direction. Before either could speak, a second knock came, and Fleur opened the door without another word, Arielle disappearing to her nesting room as she did.

Harry appeared on other side, a pint of milk in hand, a frown upon his face.

"Here," he said, leaning down to the ground and placing the bottle upon her doorstep. He turned to leave at first, though his attention was called back as, behind Fleur, Bill appeared. "I didn't know you had company."

Fleur cast a brief glance behind her. "He's my chauffeur," she said quickly, though she did not know why.

"Bill," introduced Bill, leaning around Fleur to offer a hand to shake. There was a moment, then, when he took in Harry as he stood. His strange contrasts. His jolting eyes and broad form, rough hands and careful motion. "Nice to meet you."

Harry took the hand. "Harry," he said, his eyes fixated upon Bill's attire, leather jacket and all. The cover was flimsy, though Fleur doubted that Harry had the worldliness to make a true assessment. "Where's your car, then?"

"Oh, I broke down," Bill said, his gaze similarly quizzical as he took in Harry. "The Princess wanted to drive to see Whitby today, but it's not to be."

"'The Princess' is the only reason you have a job," Fleur said, watching Harry grin as he viewed their bickering. She gave him a hard look. "Don't you have sheep to butcher or something?"

Before Harry could voice a response, Bill cut in. "Don't be so hasty, Fleur," he said, in a tone that brought her to meet his eyes. He mouthed 'trust me' to her. "I've not had the pleasure of meeting your new neighbours, and if me and my boyfriend are going move up here for you, I'd like to meet some of the folk I'll likely end up transporting."

"I can't imagine we run in the same social circles," Fleur said. Harry hummed in agreement.

Bill waved them away. "Rubbish," he said. He called Harry on. "Come on in, we've just put the kettle on."

Harry shifted backward slightly. "I wouldn't want to intrude," he said. He took off his flatcap for a moment, exposing the wild black hair beneath and running a hand through it.

" _We've_ already invited you, so you're not intruding," Bill said. He began to walk away from the door, his action in turn pulling Fleur with him, and Harry followed along too. "And I'm sure you've not got much on; it's Saturday."

Fleur and Bill returned to the very places they'd sat before, though now joined by Harry. He wore a guarded expression, though his eyes flicked around the house whenever he came to think that they took no notice of him. To his eyes, there was nothing to see, as there truly wasn't anything _to_ see. The only thing of note was Arielle and her wand, both of which were tucked away safely.

Yet, his eyes still watched all the same, as though the air held secrets that only he could see. And, more often than not, his eyes tended to drift to meet Fleur's, their looks ones that spoke of mutual discomfort.

"So, what is it that you do, Harry?" Bill asked. He braced his elbows upon the table, leaning forward and peering at Harry. Gone was the master curse breaker, then was the child.

Harry took off his glasses so that he could pinch the bridge of his nose. "Cattle farming," he said. "It's all anyone does around here."

"A fulfilling job, is it?" The kettle pinged out in acknowledgement of its boiling, and so Bill stood, walking to make their tea. "Seems to do wonders for your health, anyway."

The last of Bill's words was accompanied with a swift glance at Harry's arms. Though he tried hiding it, Harry shifted in his seat, uncomfortable at the attention.

"Family business," Harry mumbled, his jaw firmly set.

Bill's head disappeared for moment, ducking down to retrieve tea bags and sugar. "I suppose it's a fun enough life. Fresh air, fresh food," he said, before popping up once more. "Is that all you've wanted to do, then?" He dropped three tea bags in three mugs. "Think you'll farm for the rest of your life?"

Harry's eyebrows raised on his forehead. "Haven't given it much thought."

"So, you've not thought about leaving?" Bill asked. "Isn't that all anyone does in places like this?"

Harry looked at Fleur. "Is this your doing?" he asked, in a hushed voice. One pitched in hope, and only hope, that Bill might not hear it. "Did you just invite me in here to take the piss?"

"He's this annoying all on his own," Fleur whispered back. "And no-one is forcing you to be here."

Harry sat back in his chair, his expression thoughtful. Likely pondering why he _was_ there, Fleur realised. "I like it here," he called out quickly. "Besides, my parents need all the help they can get."

"So, when you go to a big city like London," Bill proposed. as he returned, placing their three mugs on the table. He had remembered to give Fleur coffee, thankfully. "You never find yourself hoping you'd one day live there?"

"Can't say I've been too often," Harry said. "Seems like it's loud and full of twats, though."

Fleur breathed out a laugh before she could stop herself.

"I come from a place like this," Bill said. "Ottery St Catchpole, down in Devon. I spent the entire there wanting to leave, and I'll be honest, even on shit days, I've never once thought of moving back."

Harry's eyebrows came together studiously. "What happened to your accent?"

"Private school," Bill explained, "then moving to London."

"How'd you end up being a chauffeur after going to private school?"

Bill looked to Fleur with an amused smile. "Never said it was a good private school," he told Harry. Just as he had before, he took a sip of his drink, and burned the tip of his tongue once more. "So, Harry, what do you for fun?"

"Not much fun 'round here," Harry said, smiling entirely to himself. "It's grim up north."

Bill laughed. Fleur stared at the pair of them, confused.

"We make our own mischief," Harry then said. "Tipping cows and playing football. That sort of thing."

To her side, Bill looked poised to ask another million questions, balanced upon the knife edge of tact and inquisition. Tact, it seemed, somehow won out, though Harry drew breath to continue.

"Mostly," Harry then said, "on the days I've off, I go around the popular parts of a moors." He gave a quietly bashful half-smile. "I do a bit of volunteering around the trials and the campsites and stuff, picking up all the shit that people leave."

"And that's how you spend your days off?" Bill asked, incredulous.

Harry shrugged. "I like the peace."

"Do you not have friends to get plastered with?" Bill questioned.

Harry shook his head. "I like the peace," he repeated, before pulling back his sleeve to glance at his watch. "I need to be getting off. Still work to be done, even on weekends." He slapped his knees, as if to clear the air for his announcement, before he looked to Fleur. "I'll be around tomorrow, same time."

Fleur nodded, and Harry showed himself out. A long silence dragged, until the latch of the door clicked into place.

"There's something strange about him," Bill said, the moment the door shut. "I don't quite know what it is, but there's something." He stood and began to walk the floor. "He's not affected by the allure, is he?"

Fleur shook her head. "Not at all."

"How weird," Bill commented. "He seems so mundane, and yet…not."

"He fits in with the rest of the village, then," Fleur said, "and he's hardly relevant, considering everything at stake if I am slow in discovering the artefact."

"Yet," Bill began. "Yet, he knows this village better than you could ever hope to. He knows what is normal here well enough that the moment something changes, he sees it." He gave Fleur a significant look. "It's why he came back here, even after you've no doubt been an arsehole to him. To make sure your difference is not one that might cause harm."

"He was an asshole," Fleur muttered, folding her arms across herself. "Called me a child for smoking."

"It's not the word I would use," Bill replied. "But if his greatest crime is wanting you to take better care of yourself, then he's hardly an arsehole."

"I'm sure he could have thought of less condescending ways to voice his worry."

"And you could think of less self-destructive ways to relax," Bill replied, with a sigh. "That die is cast. All I'm trying to say is that if magic doesn't provide all of the answers, and the forest holds nothing except its own trees, then he might well provide something that could prove greatly valuable."

"So, what are you suggesting?" Fleur asked. "I go to him, tail between my legs and make friends, in the hope that he might suddenly unearth the Holy Grail in the middle of his haybales?"

"There are worse ideas," Bill commented. "He could be your local guide, like we had in Egypt."

"They are magical."

"This one might be too," Bill said, with a laugh. "But there is definitely more to him than meets the eye and I think, in my oh so wise opinion, that you would be better served having him by your side than across the field." Bill folded his arms. "I trust you are able to ensure that he does not see something that might bring your work into jeopardy, too."

Try though she might to ignore it, the riddle of Harry would continue to nag at her in quiet moments. And, her curiosity was a force rarely sated with anything other than the fullest of truths.

Their mugs were empty, and Harry was not the only one with work to be done.

* * *

Armed with the knowledge of her own magic's likely shortcomings, the lack of appreciable results from further readings in the village was no surprise. The roads, nor the village, held any of a wizard's magic, no matter how much she might've wished it to.

Yet, in the moments that Fleur decided simply to go for a walk along the roads in the brightening mornings, with her wand firmly tucked in her pocket, she soon sensed a sensation entirely different. She did not know if it was simply her mind allowing Bill's words to grow true by suggestion, but the air did seem altogether altered.

The air of a magical place, be that Beauxbatons or the halls of her own childhood home, was palpable, as alive as the trees that rooted themselves in the earth or the birds that soared through the sky. When there, thoughts seemed to come more freely. Creativity formed more naturally.

The very air that you breathed willed you to be better, to succeed and to grow greater than you were the day before. Once there, a riddle that one was saddled with for months would be solved overnight. Once there, a grand struggle became little more than the tiniest nuisance.

Hartoft's air, of course, was not that. But there was an aura to it, at first easily confused with a countryside's peace, though upon Fleur's own review it became clear to be more than that. Mr and Mrs Stockton, two of the truly old members of the village, did not walk with creaking joints and crooked spines, their strides as easy as they would've been in their youth. Even as, throughout the country of England, Foot-and-Mouth disease ran rampant in its livestock, there was not a single case in any of the village's sprawling farms whatsoever.

Though there was certainly struggle to be seen and found and undertaken here, there did not seem to be so much that it overwhelmed those that did. The skies still held clouds in these days of dwindling winter, but they parted as often as lingered.

Yet, such a feeling held one exact end. The forest of Hartoft.

One gentle walk upon its perimeter had solidified the village's growing comfort in Fleur's, exactly as even the forest's edges offered nothing except cold and darkness. Even in midday or mid-afternoon, no light shone through the bare branches, no birds sang overhead. The changing days did not change its sight one bit, the trees endless and immortal.

After meeting with Ora, Fleur did not dare walk in there until she knew exactly of the Fae's involvement in such a place. If it were to be a gate into their world of tricks and misdirection, she would need to know as to go into such a place unaware was suicide.

Part of growing up, Fleur came to know, was tearing the myths of magic from the truth of it. A child sees a Veela and reckons them an angel, yet an adult sees a person, of beauty greater than most and power too dangerous to be wielded freely. A ghost goes from a spirit brought forth to scare to people, to a trapped soul, trapped in its failed destiny for all eternity.

Yet, the Fae in Fleur's eyes and in nearly all others had never had such a moment of discordance between truth and tale. They could be the rightful creators of all the world, of magic and life and all in between, shepherds over all the people of the Earth. They could be tricksters, concerned solely in the games they could make out of mortal lives. Or, they could the hands of the Gods, pushing people in the directions that the tides of fate demanded.

No one knew. They were seen so infrequently that no one had cause nor capability to know. Yet, one thing was utterly certain.

Do not, ever, be rude to them. They are not a malevolent people, not whatsoever, but do not give them even a fraction of a moment's pause to consider that you had been poor company. The consequences, as ever, would be beyond a normal mind's comprehension.

So no, even Fleur did not walk blindly into the darkest edges of that forest, despite how much her professional curiosity might well have wished her to. She studied it, both with her eyes and with her wand, though neither offered anything beyond cold, unending blindness.

Such discomforting thoughts accompanied her on her walk from the forest back to her cottage, broken only by the tiny chatter that the other villagers passed by offered. They came to have learned her name, likely with nothing better to do, and Fleur surprised herself by finding that she came to know theirs, too. Bothoroyds and Blackwells and Dentons, amongst others.

By the time she arrived home, the sky was held in nightfall and nearly all of the other residents that fled into the opposite direction of Fleur, aiming for one pub or another, some even planning to allow the excess of enjoyment on this day, and this day of the week alone.

The perfect time, Fleur knew, for the auror to show up on her doorstep. And the darkness of the night sky did not exist as her only company for long, as no sooner did Fleur unsettle the loose stones on her pathway did they appear with a gentle crackling of their apparition in Fleur's back garden.

They did not need an introduction, either.

"Auror Tonks," Fleur welcomed, as the auror's face appeared from behind the wisteria-covered gate that led into the side of the cottage. Even in the winter, the flowers still managed to bloom, their violet colouring holding the same hue as Auror Tonks' hair. "What a pleasant surprise."

"Wotcher," Tonks said. Fleur's arm swept open and Tonks rushed to follow the path which it tracked, through Fleur's front door and into her house. Fleur's warding enchantments brushed against Tonks, her magic and her form, though they found nothing to grasp.

Before Fleur had the time to direct her to the kitchen, Tonks walked into living room and sat upon the sofa there; a seat Fleur herself had not yet taken.

Fleur took her in, her eyes unfailingly alive in intrigue at her newest guest. Her pale skin reddened by the cold air outside. The softest edges of her face, one most comfortable in grins and smiles. Her eyes, wide and searching, that seemed unable to decide whether to be green or blue, and so choose both and neither.

Yet, as Fleur looked at her, the most pertinent thought was why she _chose_ to look this way. She was a metamorphmagus, after all. Her appearance was entirely her will, so why did she choose a vision as warm as the one she did?

"Might I ask why you're here?" Fleur questioned. She did not take a seat, but rather rested against the side of one of the loveseats that otherwise filled the room.

"There's been reports of magical use within muggle areas," Auror Tonks described. "Given that you decided to move miles away from your place of work for no clear reason, I think that's cause for a further check."

"I haven't moved here," Fleur said. "It's more of a holiday."

Tonks smiled. "That's reassuring," she said, reaching into her pocket to pull out a notepad. She began to write at once. She pushed away the short hair that fell over her ears to retrieve the pencil that she'd placed there, revealing the bar of a piercing that went from side of the shell of her ear to the other. "So, how long do you intend to stay here?" Tonks pushed away further hair that fell over her eyes. "Just so that I can know what to expect."

"No more than two months," Fleur said.

Tonks leaned on the edges of the sofa, her teeth biting around the end of her pencil. "And, if you don't mind me asking, why did you choose to take a break from your job in the middle of winter, _into_ the middle of nowhere?"

Fleur's eyes met Tonks, finding a clarity and a sharpness at total contrast with the gentle sight that was her every other feature. "I don't see how that is relevant."

Tonks grinned brightly, two dimples upon her red cheeks. "Just trying to make sense of it all."

"There is nothing to make sense of," Fleur said. She stopped leaning against the chair, preferring to stand straight. "I wished for a holiday for the same reason as everyone else."

" _Well_ ," Tonks said, "when I first promoted to Senior Auror, I went for a holiday to Barcelona to celebrate. But when I got there, I happened to find a gang of wizards caught up in the dark artefacts trade, and I couldn't just let them go, could I?" She breathed out a laugh. "So, I disguised myself as one of them and brought them into custody. The next week, I was promoted." Tonks jabbed at her notepad with her pencil. "Is your holiday something like that?"

Fleur shook her head. "Not at all."

Tonks' voice grew softer, almost whispering. "If you're sure," she said. "Though, with the strangeness of you being here, there'll be a few further checks. Just in case."

"And will it be you that does them?" Fleur asked, folding her hands upon her legs.

Tonks stood, drawing herself to her fullest height, though her eyes only came to be in line with Fleur's collarbone. "Definitely."

"Seems slightly unnecessary, non?" Fleur asked. "To have the Head Auror work a case such as this?"

"Call it professional curiosity," Tonks said. She walked out from the living room as quickly as she entered. "Though it is intriguing to know that there is a 'case' to be worked here."

_"Désolée," Fleur said. "My English is not great."_

"I think it might be too good," Tonks commented, before pulling open the door and letting cold air draught into the cottage. She took out her wand, and whispered a spell and all of a sudden, the cold air was no more, warmth once more returning to the room. "Can I speak honestly with you?"

Fleur nodded, her eyes growing wider.

"Please be careful," Tonks said. "I don't know you at all. I couldn't say the first thing about your life, or where you're from or what's really going on here yet. But I know the kind of people that hold power in the Ministry, and I know how they view the goblins that you work for. And, unfortunately, how they view magical beings like you."

"You are in a hurry to distance yourself from the Ministry," Fleur said. "Are you not one that holds power?"

Tonks' hand passed over the lapel of her long red jacket, upon which a silver medallion was pinned. "I hold nothing except this badge," she said. "I've had my position for half a year, and I've spent the entire time wanting to arrest the people above me, not the people that I serve. I know in their eyes, I'm just a scapegoat that they know will fail. They can look at me and say they gave a Half-blood a chance and that I'm proof that we can't be trusted." She sighed. "But I won't give them that chance."

Fleur walked toward Tonks, reaching over her shoulder to push open the door, more so than it already was. "I understand."

Tonks looked, the space between them slight. "Good," she said, her voice a whisper in the air. "I hope we never have to meet again."

"Me too."

"That doesn't mean that I don't hope we meet again, as I'm sure we will," Tonks said. "After you've found whatever it is you're searching for, and I make sure no-one named Nott or Malfoy ever works inside my government ever again."

* * *

The journey to Harry's house was short, though it was not easy. Yet, much like all of the most difficult paths, it was one made out of growing necessity.

Though she might've worn a fairer face than most, in the turning days Fleur could feel the growing watch of Auror Tonks upon her. Even in the darkest night, she did not dare draw her wand outside her home. Her intuition offered no clarity, either. She was no closer to sensing whatever it was that called her there, no matter how much she tried.

Fleur knocked upon their door twice, on a cool, foggy day. It opened before the third, revealing Catherine.

"Hello love," she said. "Do you want to come in?" She pointed her thumb toward the inside of her house, though Fleur's focus remained solely upon Catherine. "We've just had tea, but I'm sure we can make you something if you're hungry."

Fleur shook her head, a small smile tugging at her lips. "I'm quite alright," she said. "I was hoping to borrow 'Arry for a moment, if that is possible."

Catherine smiled broadly. "Do you know, me and Matthew were just saying how you nice it'd be for you two to get to know one another," she said, her hands coming to rest upon her waist. "He's yours for as long as you like."

The figure of Catherine departed to be soon after replaced by the far grander figure of her son, dressed, for a moment, in clothes that he might well've worn had his house sat inside a city. Jeans and a pair of trainers, his hair not hidden beneath a flatcap better worn by an older man and instead falling wildly around his face.

The only thing that it seemed was the same was his eyes. Still utterly startling.

Harry followed Fleur out of his house and along the road before he spoke. "What do you want?" he first asked.

"Company," Fleur answered, her gaze looking out into the fog-draped moorland.

"I thought we made it perfectly clear that neither of us wanted that."

"Perhaps we were too quick to judge," Fleur said. She stopped and turned, walking backwards just as Harry had done the first time they'd spoke. "I'm sure, given more time, we might find that we share a few things in common."

"Seems a big difference from how you were all of a day ago," Harry said. He did not look at her, but beyond her to the path that they were aimed toward. His focus tilted left, and so she aimed herself right. "So, what's changed?"

In her attempt to answer, Fleur lost her footing on the unfamiliar pavement, tripping backward and surely to the floor. Except, no sooner did she begin to fall, than did she stop, stilled by the arms of Harry.

She jumped out of his arms the second she realised that she was in them. "My perspective," she said, as she moved from prostrate to upright without a single glance toward him. She did not attempt to walk as Harry had done any further. "I realise that there's no use in me making enemies here if I am to stay for any length of time. I don't want my presence to cause any damage to the village."

Harry's eyes were wide in disbelief. "I'm sure."

"I mean it," Fleur said, before she sighed.

"Seems you care more about a village you've likely never heard of two weeks ago than you do your own health."

Fleur sighed again. "I am trying to quit, I promise."

"It's what they all say," Harry replied, his voice caustic and sharp. "Never fucking changes anything though, does it?"

"Perhaps you want some actual change then, to convince you?" Fleur asked, before she drew a deep breath. "I promise that for as long as I am here, I will not smoke."

"At all?" Harry clarified.

"Not once," Fleur said calmly. With magic, it would be _easy_. "If I do, I will leave the whole of the North of England, never to return."

He swayed his head from side to side, weighing the offer for a long moment. "I'll hold you to that," he told her, and there was a change in his voice as he did. If muggles were capable of unbreakable vows, Fleur would've then found herself within one. "And it ought to be a token of you taking care of yourself."

"Then it's that too," Fleur said, with a wave of her hand. "So, are you open to attempting to be more cordial with one another?"

Harry shook his head. "One more thing," he said, raising his index finger into the air. "Why are you here?"

"As I said before," Fleur said quickly, "my employers have an interest in the village."

"But what _kind_ of interest?" he asked, with a sense of irritated exasperation flooding into his words.

Fleur paused for a moment.

"I work for a company that curates historical artefacts," Fleur settled on saying, the truth of her words settling Harry. His brow, that seemed to be in a permanent furrow, smoothed out. "They believe that Hartoft is the site for something of historical relevance, so they have tasked me with trying to pinpoint exactly where it is."

"I see," Harry said, smiling to himself. "So, what you actually want is my help."

"I suppose," Fleur agreed. "Yes, I do."

Harry stood still. "Do you promise that if I help you, and you find whatever it is you're looking for, that there'll be nothing else that comes along with it?" he asked, his gaze searching. "That you'll keep it all quiet, and that when you leave, everyone here goes back to living the life they had before."

Fleur's smile was bright and earnest. "Happily," she said. "Your world will be as small as it always was."

Harry offered his hand. "Deal?"

Fleur took it. His skin was coarse, rough with work and far larger than hers. Her thumb brushed against the back of his knuckles by accident, meeting the thin scars that were etched there. "Deal."

As they shook, something passed through Fleur's skin. The cracklings and jolts of energy, undirected and yet all so aware. It was a sensation that stole her focus, almost entirely.

"You had me worried, you know," Harry said, as they walked along the roads that Fleur had beaten the path of so many times in even her brief time there. Yet, despite that growing familiarity, it was only Harry's voice that returned her to normality.

While they walked, the light of the sun began to burn through some of the fog, returning the sights of nature to the two of them. "Why is that?"

"It's just the last newcomer that came from nowhere like you did. He-" Harry paused, measuring himself. "-he didn't bring anything good is all."

"One of those frackers?"

Harry shook his head. "No, not this one," he said, his vision disappearing into the distance. "He was an older bloke; oldest man I've ever met. He came, asked me what my life was like, and then a week later…Well, something happened." He coughed then to clear his throat, and when he spoke once more, his jade eyes cut through her. "Make sure, whatever you do, you don't bring any harm to Hartoft or the people in it as if you do, there'll be Hell to pay."

Fleur had seen enough in her life to not worry herself over the empty threats of muggles, even strange ones like Harry. And yet, there was something to him then. That strange oddness that seemed to shroud him suddenly hardened, directed at her and only her, and Fleur was forced to believe absolutely in the wroth that Harry had promised.

In that village, in the changing of the seasons, where Winter and Spring blurred and crossed, Fleur came to know that this domain was Harry's, and Harry's alone. He was its Lord, its shepherd, and its guardian.

"I've got a week off this next week; last one before everything starts getting busy," Harry said. "I'll show you what you're looking for. And you won't need your chauffeur to find it." He outstretched an arm. "It's in the forest. I know it is."

Fleur's jaw tightened, her eyes closing for a moment. "Of course," she said, quietly enough that the words did not carry all the way to Harry's ears.

Yet, for no great reason, the prospect of entering into the woods with Harry by her side was one that was infinitely more appealing than going by herself.


End file.
